The “social” facilitation of eating without the presence of others: Self-reflection on eating makes food taste better and people eat more

The “social” facilitation of eating without the presence of others: Self-reflection on eating makes food taste better and people eat more. Ryuzaburo Nakata and Nobuyuki Kawai. Physiology & Behavior, Volume 179, 1 October 2017, Pages 23-29, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2017.05.022

Highlights
•    We investigated the social facilitation of eating in the absence of other individuals.
•    Participants rated food as tasting better in front of a mirror reflecting visual information of themselves.
•    Consumption of food was also increased by observing themselves eating.
•    A similar facilitation effect was observed even when eating in front of a static picture of themselves

Abstract: Food tastes better and people eat more of it when eaten with company than alone. Although several explanations have been proposed for this social facilitation of eating, they share the basic assumption that this phenomenon is achieved by the existence of co-eating others. Here, we demonstrate a similar “social” facilitation of eating in the absence of other individuals. Elderly participants tasted a piece of popcorn alone while in front of a mirror (which reflects the participant themselves eating popcorn) or in front of a wall-reflecting monitor, and were found to eat more popcorn and rate it better tasting in the self-reflecting condition than in the monitor condition. Similar results were found for younger adults. The results suggest that the social facilitation of eating does not necessarily require the presence of another individual. Furthermore, we observed a similar “social” facilitation of eating even when participants ate a piece of popcorn in front of a static picture of themselves eating, suggesting that static visual information of “someone” eating food is sufficient to produce the “social” facilitation of eating.